Observations on the July Democratic Debates — Second Night

1

I watched this debate at a bar in the West Village with my friend. There were two advantages to doing so: watching the debates on television with an audience, and alcohol. The first of these reinforced my utter contempt for television news: CNN and NBC are treating the debates not as news but as television — reality television, to be more precise. Moderators — especially Jake Tapper — shaped what we saw not as the rational examination of policies but as spectacle, and the candidates, well aware of their surroundings, took the bait. The alcohol — Brooklyn Lager — helped the idiocy go down more gently.

2

Bill DeBlasio was heckled by protestors for failing to take action against the policeman who put Eric Garner in the chokehold that killed him. Good. He deserves it. His vanity campaign offers more evidence that he is a fraud, not quite of Trumpian proportions but approaching it. He is a Clinton neoliberal wearing a Warren-Sanders sheepskin and always has been. At least his nemesis Andrew Cuomo does not disguise his centrist yuppie-Democrat essence. Both are sad and awful remnants of the 1990s Democratic Party. I hear Mario Cuomo rolling in his grave.

3

Debate is a matter of the giving and taking of reasons, with the employment of rhetoric to…